Men make better political leaders than women, according to half of all people surveyed for the latest UN report on gender bias.
Men are also better business executives, according to 40% of respondents.
A shocking 25% of people also believe that it is justified for a man to beat his wife.
The research is based on data collected in 91 countries, covering 85% of the global population.
The Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI), produced by the UN's Development Programme (UNDP), assesses bias by surveying attitudes on women’s role in politics, education and work, as well as women’s rights over their own bodies.
This year’s report concluded that the vast majority of people, nine out of ten, remain biased against women.
Researchers expressed shock at the stagnation in attitudes and a general lack of progress on women’s rights over the past decade.
"Social norms that impair women’s rights are also detrimental to society more broadly, dampening the expansion of human development," said Pedro Conceição, head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office.
Women continue to be severely underrepresented in politics, the report found. The number of women heads of state has hovered around 10% since 1995.
Meanwhile, increased access to education has failed to deliver economic empowerment for women.
Even in the 59 countries where women are now more educated than men, there remains a nearly 40% gender income gap in favour of men. Women occupy less than a third of managerial positions.
But the report authors said that legislation that addresses gender imbalance has helped to shift attitudes in some cases.
"An important place to start is recognising the economic value of unpaid care work," said Raquel Lagunas, Director of UNDP's Gender Team.
"This can be a very effective way of challenging gender norms around how care work is viewed.
"In countries with the highest levels of gender biases against women, it is estimated that women spend over six times as much time as men on unpaid care work."
As to why attitudes have failed to move on in the past ten years, the report’s authors said "breaking the cycle" was very challenging.
"Social norms persist because they are deeply embedded in our culture and our everyday lives," Heriberto Tapia, Research and Strategic Partnership Advisor for the Human Development Report Office, UNDP told RTÉ News.
"They are shaped by our socialisation within families, schools, workplaces and often dictate how we perceive ourselves in relation to others," he added.
Analysts suggested that biases against women could also be explained, in part, by economic decline combined with a recent backlash against women’s rights.
"Growing inequality over that same period may have exacerbated what experts call male-aggrieved entitlement and facilitated the rise of right-wing ideologies and politics that have reversed progress toward gender equality," said Foteini Papagioti, senior policy advisor, International Centre for Research on Women.
The UN has listed gender equality as one of its 17 sustainable development goals to be implemented by 2030, but acknowledges that progress has stalled.
UN Women estimates that, at the current rate, gender equality will not be achieved for 300 years.
